“the United States should adopt a grand strategy of “investment,” building legitimacy and capacity in the very institutions that will protect our interests in a liberal global construct of the future when we are no longer the dominant imperial power. “
See the world as it is, not as we hope it to be. Look to Syria and the Sudan to see how this liberal approach to the realities of World Order power are working.
These notions are generated in the salons of Brussels and Washington by those who have never looked a deadly foe, armed with a dangerous weapon, in the the eye.
In my mind the premiss is flawed. The thought that China can be contained is delusional.
China was contained for say 200 years and was kept in a backward state. The people of China in 2012 do not want to be backward, they want to prosper and have good lives.
The world must come to grips with the change resulting from China transitioning from a backward, then totalitarian state, into one that is more modern and vibrant.
The world east of Suez is ascendent and will begin to lead. The world west of Suez, that is Europe, is in decline. The key to understanding the future is to understand that fact